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Comment by pkulak | Hacker News Reader

> Person saying taxes should be higher for everyone -- what's stopping them from paying more right now?

Because me sending random cash to the federal government does absolutely nothing, and higher taxes can pay for actual programs. There's a huge difference between exempting yourself from a new mandate you enforce on everyone else, and simply waiting for a universal mandate before acting yourself.

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You can voluntarily pay extra income taxes. That money goes into the general fund and is used to pay for actual programs, such as servicing interest on the $28T national debt and invading other countries.

Yea, it's perfectly intellectually consistent to say "I'll do it if you do it too"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_game

There is no basis for believing that the payoff for coordination is elevated. If anything the opposite: we see that more centralized decision-making introduces larger deadweight losses. See US-Afghanistan, as enabled by the tax base, as an example.

> There is no basis for believing that the payoff for coordination is elevated

Libraries, fire stations, universal K-12 education? Certainly imperfect, but def benefit from coordination. Health care too - a lack of universal coordination makes life difficult.

On the private sector side, many companies are great examples of coordination payoffs (I trade entrepreneurial risk/reward for consistent benefits).

But it is the height of hypocrisy to force other people to do things that neither they nor you would do in isolation. You’re not preventing a prisoner’s dilemma here because the proposed tax contribution is strictly monotonic with or without individual participation.

You can donate money to a cause you believe in and then deduct it from your taxes.

That seem like a wonderful way to have the NRA and Planned Parenthood swimming in cash, and no money at all for building lighthouses and sewers.

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